The Day Has Come: Facebook Pushes People to Go Public — Facebook announced this morning that its 350 million users will be prompted to make their status messages and shared content publicly visible to the world at large and search engines. It's a move we expected but the language used in the announcement is near Orwellian.

New Tools to Control Your Experience — Today, we're launching new tools to give you even greater control over the information you share. Mark Zuckerberg, our founder and CEO, talked about these changes in his post last week. They include a simpler privacy settings page and a tool …

Not Yet The Season For a Nook — The holidays are no joyride. Between the stress, the money and the relatives, no wonder so many people contract Seasonal Depression, Financial-Obligation Migraine and Family Drama Disorder. — And in the electronics business, Greed-Borne Insanity is contagious.

Apple tablet set for spring launch? — Production is starting and should hit mass-market stride in February, says an analyst — Artist's rendition of an Apple tablet computer, with iPhone. Credit: AppleInsider — “The manufacturing cogs for the tablet are creaking into action,” …

AT&T moves closer to usage-based fees for data — With some smartphone users turning into data hogs, AT&T eyes a ‘pricing scheme’ — Computerworld - AT&T is moving even closer to charging special usage fees to heavy data users, including those with iPhones and other smartphones.

AOL Quietly Returns to Life on Its Own — The long, chaotic and star-crossed relationship between AOL and Time Warner finally ended in divorce. — AOL began trading as its own public company Wednesday, after its long planned spin-off from Time Warner was finally made official.

15 Gadgets That Changed Everything This Decade — This decade is the decade of gadgets. — From the tiny USB thumb drive introduced in 2000 to the iPhone 3G in 2008, a bunch of revolutionary devices have been brought to the market. — Check out the 15 best gadgets of the decade →

Microsoft reposts Windows 7 download tool — Microsoft said Wednesday it has reposted a tool to the Internet that aids installing Windows 7 on Netbooks and computers without an optical drive. — The software maker pulled the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool off its Web site last month …

Buy a DVD on Amazon; Start Watching the Movie in Minutes — Amazon.com just launched a promotion dubbed Disc+ On Demand that may well be the start to the industry's first major multi-platform retail experience. Customers who buy select movies on DVD or Blu-ray will be offered the chance …

Hitwise: Google Near 72% Of All US Searches — Google is approaching a 72% market share of searches in the U.S. according to the latest release from Experian Hitwise. The November 2009 stats show Google getting 71.57% of all U.S. searches, up almost a full percent from October.

Microsoft: Do not mention/use Apple products at our events — Probably still reeling from all publicity around these shots, Microsoft reportedly told journalists gathered for a company press event in Germany not to use or mention Apple products. Our German is a bit rusty and Google is even worse …

First Mobile Firefox enters home stretch — Mozilla is wrapping up work on its first version of Firefox for mobile phones, an important step in bringing the second most popular PC browser to an area where a rival project holds more influence. — “Our goal is to have a release candidate next week …

‘70% Chance’ Of An iPhone At Verizon Next Year — Update: Piper's “70%” prediction apparently originally dates back to a note from Oct. 17, but was reiterated in a note today. Still, worth discussing... Earlier: AT&T's era of exclusivity on the iPhone is fading fast.

Why Apple succeeds, and always will — Simply put: Apple doesn't play by the rules. It reinvents them. Apple applies what I call “David Thinking” to its broader business, product development and marketing. Apple is David to Microsoft Goliath — and other ones, too. Goliath plays by one set of rules.

Web Sockets Now Available In Google Chrome — Starting in the Google Chrome developer channel release 4.0.249.0, Web Sockets are available and enabled by default. Web Sockets are “TCP for the Web,” a next-generation bidirectional communication technology for web applications being standardized in part of Web Applications 1.0.

The American Diet: 34 Gigabytes a Day — A report published Wednesday by the University of California, San Diego, calculates that American households collectively consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. The paper — entitled “How Much Information?”